My Week of Hell for Sport Relief

Being asked to do a challenge for Sport Relief is like being asked to be the god parent to an ugly baby. Despite knowing you will forever have a picture of an ugly baby hanging on your wall in case your godchild's parents come to your house, it is very difficult to say no. How hard can it be anyway? You just smile by the font at the church at the christening, buy the child something silver and post a card once a year with an increasing amount of money in it. As for the picture, you just hang it in the room in your house you visit the least, although from experience hanging it in the shed always causes upset...
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The Best Christmas Present

I gave up alcohol as a New Year's Resolution at the end of 2006. Since then I haven't had a drop (actually that's not true, I did sip a gin and wine punch last weekend at a party and it was amazing). But it has been easy to 'stay stopped' and I never saw the point of starting drinking again.
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Co-Parenting Over Christmas - In Search of Some Sanity

For some divorced or separated parents, arranging and organizing equal time with the children has been an easy and smooth ride while for others, and you know who you are, it has been and is still is proving to be an experience straight out of hell for various reasons.
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Seven Facts Everyone Should Know About Immigration

Immigration is in the news once again. Not that it ever leaves it. A complex issue made harder by distortions, stereotypes, and populism. One could argue that its social and cultural effects are the trickiest to articulate and hardest to pin down. Certainly not easy to capture in a dry opinion poll.
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How to Shop Last Minute

Buying a Christmas gift for your loved ones can often be the most difficult, which is why many of us leave it to the final few days to make that special purchase. The pressure to 'get it right' and to know the receiver better than they know themselves is high.
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Have Yourself a Gender-Neutral Christmas

Christmas is traditionally quite a gendered holiday, especially when it comes to children. Here are some lovely dolls to buy for the girls in your life, and some toy dinosaurs for the boys. And don't forget about the miniature cooking utensils and vacuum cleaners - learning how to keep house is, of course, all girls really want and need.
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Festive Chart Toppers

This year the spectrum of songs going for Christmas number one on the Vodafone Big Top 40 is as random as ever from credible contenders, charity records and viral sensations. It's up to you and your downloads of course. All we'll say is choose carefully!
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Finally Putting the 'Skiver' Myths to Bed: My Political Wishlist for 2013

As is becoming abundantly clear, 2013 will be extremely tough - on the unemployed and on workers on low incomes, on those with disabilities, on families, on single parents and, yes, on those who work with them and for them to help improve their circumstances.
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Recipe for the Weekend: Beef Sirloin With Portobello Mushrooms and Salsa Verde

This deliciously rich dish is the ideal festive treat and a perfect recipe for Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve or a special dinner this weekend. Splash out on the best quality sirloin you can find and enjoy with good bottle of Barbera D'Alba. Happy Christmas!
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The Scandal of Child Soldiers in Africa Must Stop

While my travels meant I'd heard of the Central African Republic - unlike many people in the West - and I knew of the huge problem of child soldiers in the region, it was truly eye-opening and enlightening to see the situation up close, particularly the brave work of the UNICEF workers risking their lives to negotiate their release. Thousands of children in the country, out of a population of only 5million, have been abducted, tricked or coerced into fighting.
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An Enterprising Future for All in 2013

Working in a support role to small businesses, as I do, I see first-hand that many small companies struggle to turn profits consistently, but most of them don't need to do anything too drastic to turn things around. They just need to start working smarter to maximise the potential of what they do.
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Can You Spot a Zombie?

If businesses and their advisers are communicating regularly, they will already have a very good measure of who they are dealing with. And if they do not, perhaps more than one of them is the zombie.
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24 Years Later, Remembering Pan Am Flight 101

Dec. 21, 1988 was the day the airport lounge was transformed from an opulent inner sanctum for the privileged first class passenger to an urbane chamber of horrors for the next of kin. As an airline agent, inner strength and numbness enabled me to carry out my duties without falling apart as I confirmed these families' worst nightmare.
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How to Defend Earth From Asteroids

It only takes one asteroid, 100 or so meters across, impacting the Earth to explode with the force of a dozen nuclear weapons. This is something we might wish to avoid! So what do we do?
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Digital Strategies for Winning the Global Race

The future of government is digital. And if we're to get ahead in the global race, we must equip ourselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The prize is enormous: simply by making everyday transactions digital, we can save up to £1.2 billion by 2015, and an estimated £1.7 billion a year beyond 2015 an estimated £1.7 billion a year beyond 2015.
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Was Romania's 1989 Christmas Revolution a Fake?

There is no doubt in my mind that Romania's change of government in 1989 was a revolution - even if it was stage managed and the mob were manipulated. It has all the ingredients of a classic revolution: a total chance of the political system; an angry mob; several days of chaos; armed groups fighting each other and a shadowy clique of power brokers arguing about who will take over.
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Why Is the Ancient Mayan Prophecy That Today Is the End of the World So Popular?

If there is a recurrent pattern through history of believing in imminent apocalypse, does this begin to reveal more about our psychology? 'Apocalypticism' appears linked to certain religious and personality outlooks.
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